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The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

Growing Strong For Two Years
What has happened in the two years since SoftLayer joined forces with IBM? In a word: growth. Growth in several areas was spotlighted by 451 Research report. The article noted that SoftLayer is “no longer just an IaaS offer, but the foundation on which IBM is building strategic products. IBM Bluemix PaaS, data services and multiple SaaS offerings all run atop SoftLayer infrastructure.”

Welcome to The IBM Family
We’re excited to welcome Compose into our growing IBM brood. The acquisition was announced last week, but what does it bring the IBM family? Fortune highlights the company’s ability to “attract a new flock of web and mobile developers” to IBM, while offering up “lightweight database services based on MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, RethinkDB and other databases.”

We’re Happy to Work With You
Core insurance technology software and IT services provider, Majesco, chose the IBM Cloud platform for its entire suite of property and casualty insurance software products to customers in a public cloud. In a write-up by IBR, Majesco’s COO Ed Ossie said, “Working with IBM will help insurers transform their business with a modern core solution that can be deployed on a proven and tested environment.”

A Chip Off The Old Block
IBM has designed the world’s smallest chip with the help of GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung. Squint a bit and you might be able to see the 7 nm (yes, that’s a nanometer) chip that is the future of microprocessing.

In a statement, IBM called this new technology “crucial to meeting the anticipated demands of future cloud computing and Big Data systems, cognitive computing, mobile products, and other emerging technologies.”

Has your cPanel server ever gone down only to not come back online because the disk failed?

At SoftLayer, data migration is in the hands of our customers. That means you must save your data and move it to a new server. Well, thanks to a lot of slow weekends, I’ve had time to write a bash script that automates the process for you. It’s been tested in a dev environment of my own working with the data center to simulate the dreaded DRS (data retention service) when a drive fails and in a live environment to see what new curveballs could happen. In this three-part series, we’ll discuss how to do server preventative maintenance to prevent a total disaster, how to restore your backed up data (if you have backups), and finally we’ll go over the script itself to fully automate a process to backup, move, and restore all of your cPanel data safely (if the prior two aren’t options for you).

Let’s start off with some preventative maintenance first and work on setting up backups in WHM itself.

First thing you’ll need to do is log into your WHM, and then go to Home >> Backup >> Backup Configuration. You will probably have an information box at the top that says “The legacy backups system is currently disabled;” that’s fine, let it stay disabled. The legacy backup system is going away soon anyway, and the newer system allows for more customization. If you haven’t clicked “Enable” under the Global Settings, now would be the time to do so, so that the rest of the page becomes visible. Now, you should be able to modify the rest of the backup configuration, so let’s start with the type.

In my personal opinion, compressed is the only way to go. Yes, it takes longer, but uses less disk space in the end. Uncompressed uses up too much space, but it’s faster. Incremental is also not a good choice, as it only allows for one backup and it does not allow for users to include additional destinations.

The next section is scheduling and retention, and, personally, I like my backups done daily with a five-day retention plan. Yes it does use up a bit more space, but it’s also the safest because you’ll have backups from literally the day prior in case something happens.

The next section, Files, is where you will pick the users you want to backup along with what type of data you want to include. I prefer to just leave the defaulted settings here in this section and only choose my users that I want to backup instead. It’s your server though, so you’re free to enable/disable the various options as you see fit. I would definitely leave the options for backing up system files checked though as it is highly recommended to keep that option checked.

The next section deals with databases, and again, this one’s up to you. Per Account is your bare minimum option and is still safe regardless. Entire MySQL directory will just blanket backup the entire MySQL directory instead. The last option encompasses the two prior options, which to me is a bit overkill as the Per Account Only option works well enough on its own.

Now let’s start the actual configuration of the backup service. From here, we’ll choose the backup directory as well as a few other options regarding the retention and additional destinations. The best practice here is to have a drive specifically for backups, and not just another partition or a folder, but a completely separate drive. Wherever you want the backups to reside, type that path in the box. I usually have a secondary drive mounted as /backup to put them in so the pre-filled option works fine for me. The option for mounting the drive as needed should be enabled if you have a separate mount point that is not always mounted. As for the additional destination part, that’s up to you if you want to make backups of your backups. This will allow you to keep backups of the backups offsite somewhere else just in case your server decides to divide by zero or some other random issue that causes everything to go down without being recoverable. Clicking the “Create New Destination” option will bring up a new section to fill in all the data relevant to what you chose.

Once you’ve done all of this, simply click “Save Configuration.” Now you’re done!

But let’s say you’re ready to make a full backup right now instead of waiting for it to automatically run. For this, we’ll need to log in to the server via SSH and run a certain command instead. Using whatever SSH tool you prefer, PuTTY for me, connect to your server using the root username and password that you used to log into WHM. From there, we will run one simple command to backup everything - “/usr/local/cpanel/bin/backup --force” ← This will force a full backup of every user that you selected earlier when you configured the backup in WHM.

That’s pretty much it as far as preventative maintenance and backups go. Next time, we’ll go into how to restore all this content to a new drive in case something happens like someone accidentally deleting a database or a file that they really need back.

NVIDIA GPU technology powers some of the world’s fastest supercomputers. In fact, GPU technology is at the heart of the current #1 U.S. system, Titan, located at Oak Ridge National Labs. It will also be an important part of Titan’s forthcoming successor, Summit, an advanced new supercomputer based on next-generation, ultra-high performance GPU-accelerated OpenPOWER servers.

But, not everyone has access to these monster machines for their high-performance computing, deep learning, and scientific computing work. That’s why NVIDIA is working with IBM to make supercomputing-class technology more accessible to reserachers, engineers, developers, and other HPC users.

IBM Cloud announced earlier this week that NVIDIA Tesla K80 dual-GPU accelerators are now available on SoftLayer bare metal cloud servers. The team worked closely together to test and tune the speedy delivery of NVIDIA Tesla K80 enabled servers. The Tesla K80 GPU accelerators are the flagship technology of our Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform, delivering 10 times higher performance than today’s fastest CPU for a range of deep learning, data analytics and HPC applications.

Bringing Tesla K80 GPUs to SoftLayer means that more researchers and engineers worldwide will have access to ultra-high computing resources – without having to deal with the cost and time commitment of purchasing and maintaining their own HPC clusters. On-demand high performance computing can now be delivered in a matter of hours instead of the weeks or months it takes to build and deploy a dedicated system. Never before has bare-metal compute infrastructure been so agile. Fully populated Tesla K80 GPU nodes can be provisioned and used in two to four hours. Then, they can be de-provisioned or reassigned just as quickly.

With support for GPU accelerators, SoftLayer is providing full-scale data center resources for users to build a compute cluster, burst an existing cluster, or launch a compute intensive project—all on easy to use, cost effective, and easily accessible cloud infrastructure.

The strength of SoftLayer’s API and the experience of IBM Cloud make it easy for users to provision and reclaim resources to enable true cloud bursting for compute clusters, and controlling resources is key to controlling costs.

We’re delighted to expand the reach of GPU-accelerated computing broader than ever before. For more info on IBM Cloud’s GPU offerings on SoftLayer or to sign up, visit www.softlayer.com/gpu.

-Michael

Michael O’Neill is an established leader for NVIDIA. He provides specialized strategic thought leadership and technical guidance to customers on NVIDIA GRID and Tesla GPUs in virtualized environments. He works closely with business leaders to develop innovative solutions for graphical and compute heavy workloads. With over twenty years of experience in planning, developing, and implementing state of the art information systems, he has built a significant body of work empowering people to live, work and collaborate from anywhere on any device. His guidance has provided Fortune 500 companies with cloud computing solutions to help IT and service providers build private, hybrid and public clouds to deliver high-performance, elastic and cost-effective services for mobile workstyles.

I sat down with Brydon Gilliss, the founder of ThreeFortyNine, to learn more about the experience.

Now in its fourth year, the Startup Train is quickly becoming an institution for entrepreneurs, funders, and professionals traveling from Toronto to the International Startup Festival. What was the impetus behind creating this experience?The travel time to conferences is often wasted time. We wanted to try and make better use of it. Also, it can be lonely when you return from an exciting conference but don't have anyone to connect with after who had that shared experience with you. Having a group of people from your city who you travel and share the experience with creates a longer-term alumni effect in your community.

The International Startup Festival in Montreal draws one of the largest audiences of tech entrepreneurs out of any event in Canada. What do you think makes it so popular?The city, for one. Montreal is one of the best cities to visit in the summer. There is always an attraction; a reason to make the time. The festival venue is completely different ... right on the water in Old Montreal. The festival-atmosphere makes it a unique and an enjoyable experience.

How has the Startup Train experience changed over the past 4 years?Startup Train alumni know what to expect. There are always new people to meet and learn from, and we don’t complicate the experience with too much programming. There is enough to keep your business-busy if that’s your goal, but it’s also easy to relax, enjoy the service and views while meeting and chatting with people with a cocktail in hand. This year, VIA Rail, is doing us a favor and giving us one of their cool dome cars typically used for the longer-haul cross-Canada trips.

We’re really excited to do some speed mentorship on the observation deck of the train this year. What else can attendees expect to experience on the SoftLayer Startup Train this year?There are plenty of people to discuss your ideas with. You can take advantage of the networking with like-minded startups, running your ideas past some of the old hats on the train, or getting some quality advice from the mentors on-board.

The train experience attracts people from around Ontario, not just Torontonians. What do you think gels the Ontario tech community, and how does this play out each year at the Festival in Montreal?I'm not sure I know the answer. Certainly the train, as with other events in our community, is a gel point in itself. In Canada, in general, we're working to find our way quickly in this fast moving startup world. Events like the train and Startup Festival, are important ways for our lonely entrepreneurs to come together and build our energy; share battle stories; etc.

With around 2,000 people attending the International Startup Festival in Montreal it can get pretty hectic at the venue and in the Old Port in general. What are some tips you can give founders traveling, on or off the train, to Montreal for the Festival?Getting to Montreal is half the battle. Those choosing Startup Train travel can expect to exert minimum effort with the payoff of maximum enjoyment. Train travel is so easy especially when compared to flying. To fly these days (we won’t even get into the 401 or driving in Montreal), travelers need to be hours early in order to be processed and searched. You have to deal with luggage hassles. You end up losing valuable time in an irritating environment. The actual flying experience itself isn’t an event compared to the romance and fun of train travel. From the moment you get to VIA Rail’s first class lounge prior to leisurely boarding, the actual experience itself is so relaxing. In a plane you’re not likely to get a view, but on a train, that’s all you have. It’s easy to meet and make authentic connections with people on the train right away, so that by the time you arrive in Montreal, you’ve already got some necessary work done. Near the Festival site, you’ve got plenty of social options in the city (walking distance and otherwise). It’s easy to sneak off and grab a beer on a cobblestone street in Old Montreal with startup train passengers if you need a break from the Festival.

Yesterday, we announced a new pricing model that provides customers with even more visibility and control over cloud infrastructure costs.

While other cloud providers advertise “low” prices for incomplete solutions, they neglect to mention extra charges for essential resources like network bandwidth, primary system storage, and support.

At SoftLayer, our servers already include these necessary resources at no additional charge. That’s because we want to provide our customers with unmatched value and the best performance for price, which makes it easier to see actual costs of cloud solutions and budget accordingly.

Our new pricing model includes a redeveloped ordering and provisioning system that offers even more granular pricing for every SoftLayer bare metal and virtual server, from the processor to the RAM, storage, networking, security, and more.

With this new pricing announcement, we’re also introducing new configuration options for bare metal servers, including increased RAM—up to 3TB—and two new SSD drive options—960GB and 1.2TB.

To fully understand the benefits of our new pricing model, let’s take a look at the example below for an Intel Dual Xeon E5-2620 (4U) server.

You can see that our new pricing saves customers ordering this server $1,780 (or 39 percent) over the old pricing model.

Additionally, as part of yesterday's announcement, we’re launching new pricing for services based on data center location. Location-based pricing displays unique pricing for each data center and removes flat- and percentage-based surcharges, giving customers even more price transparency.

You can learn more about SoftLayer’s pricing philosophy on our website.

Fundica helps accelerate the online funding search for entrepreneurs in Canada. Once a year they take their mission offline and organize the country's only Funding Roadshow. In 2015, the SoftLayer Catalyst startup program partnered with Fundica to take the Roadshow to 11 cities across the country where they listened to over 200 entrepreneurs pitch their tech startups to panels of funders.

I recently sat down with Lana Tayara from the Funding Roadshow.

So, tell us about the purpose behind organizing the Funding Roadshow.The mission of the event is to better facilitate connections between entrepreneurs, funders from private and public sectors, and startup community leaders across Canada. The event aims to fulfill its purpose though a series of events, planned in 11 cities across Canada, by providing educational content designed to help early-stage technology based companies either start and/or grow their business. The one-day event is split into two streams throughout the course of the day. The first one allows up to 20 selected tech companies to present their business in a private room to a panel of investors, mentors, and service providers and get candid feedback to help them validate their business model. The second stream is open to all participants, comprised of all company stages, community developers, investors, and services providers, to listen to great presentations provided by industry leaders that will cover a wide range of topics designed to help them succeed with their business.

To maximize engagement in each city, the Funding Roadshow collaborates with local pro-entrepreneurship groups (accelerators, incubators, universities). In turn, this allows us to better connect our national partners with the local entrepreneurial community and its facilitators. Our national partners get the opportunity to network with each community, gain visibility nationally in the startup scene, and raise awareness about the resources they can offer to Canadian businesses.

What were your 2015 Funding Roadshow goals?The goals of the 2015 Funding Roadshow were to establish new partnerships with key players of the entrepreneurial community across Canada that would engage participants in each city to generate relevant connections, opportunities, and resources to each person present in the event.

In the 2015 Funding Roadshow, based on a follow-up survey conducted three months later, 31.6 percent of entrepreneurs were offered funding and 33.3 percent of funders funded entrepreneurs. With respect to the funding aspect of our event, our selection criteria for pitching companies were stricter, and presentation guidelines were shared with companies as to increase the quality of pitches and funding probability for 2015.

Lastly, we also offered a wider range of educational topics such as funding, growth models, legal guidance, bookkeeping, storytelling, and other resources available to help startups with their success. We would like to share the value with business owners using technology such as financial management software, online banking, cloud hosting, and secure cloud-based document storage, which can help increase efficiency and productivity within their organization.

What do you think the 2015 Funding Roadshow accomplished?The 2015 Funding Roadshow travelled through 11 cities from Halifax to Victoria. In each city, up to 20 selected technology-based companies pitched to a panel of eight funders. The initiative was put together with 59 partners, and provided over 96 educational presentations, and engaged 1,147 participants coast-to-coast. The Funding Roadshow was very proud to be able to form new partnerships with two of the most influential hubs in Canada, MaRS and Ryerson DMZ, both of which welcomed the event into their space as exclusive hosting partners in downtown Toronto.

Based on on-site feedback forms we collected from participants across Canada, we received excellent responses:

100 percent of participants who took the survey (funders, pitchers, community members, and general attendees) would participate in the next Funding Roadshow. (Based on a 19 percent participation response.)

94 percent of all participants who answered the survey were satisfied to very satisfied.

We are already in talks with returning sponsors who have reached out to express interest in the next edition of the Funding Roadshow.

Please relate some highlights from across this year's Roadshow. Any themes which emerged amongst all the pitching and networking?

Canadian VCs (venture capitalists) are investing more in early-stage companies.

There is an increase in interest from U.S. investors in mid to later stage companies.

Angel investment in technology companies has increased in comparison to previous years.

Emerging accelerators and collaboration between them.

Government funding varies significantly between provinces.

Early stage companies are still struggling with funding identification.

Overall the Funding Roadshow was a great success, and we can’t wait for 2016. SoftLayer will be there. Will you?

This guest blog post is written by Alexia Emmanoulopoulou, marketing manager at Canonical.

With OpenStack, cloud computing becomes easily accessible to everyone. It tears down financial barriers to cloud deployments and tackles the fear of lock-in. One of the main benefits of OpenStack is the fact that it is open source and supported by a wide ecosystem, with contributions from more than 200 companies, including Canonical and IBM. Users can change service providers and hardware at any time, and compared to other clouds using virtualization technology, OpenStack can double server utilization to as much as 85 percent. This means that an OpenStack cloud is economical and delivers more flexibility, scalability, and agility to businesses. The challenge however lies in recruiting and retaining OpenStack experts, who are in high demand, making it hard for companies to deploy OpenStack on time and on budget. But BootStack, Canonical’s managed cloud product solved that problem by offering all the benefits of a private cloud without any of the pain of day-to-day infrastructure management.

Addressing the Challenge of Finding OpenStack Experts

Resourcing an OpenStack six-strong team to work 24x7 would cost between $900,000 and $1.5 million and can take months of headhunting. Thus the savings that OpenStack should bring companies are eroded so Canonical created BootStack, short for Build, Operate, and Optionally Transfer. It’s a new service for setting up and operating an OpenStack cloud, in both on-premises and hosted environments, and it gives users the option of taking over the management of your cloud in the future.

After working with each customer to define their requirements and specify the right cloud infrastructure for their business, Canonical’s experienced engineering and support team builds and manages the entire cloud infrastructure of the customer, including Ubuntu OpenStack, the underlying hypervisor, and deployment onto hosted or on-premises hardware. As a result, users get all the benefits of a private cloud without any of the pain of day-to-day infrastructure management. For added protection, BootStack is backed by a clear SLA that covers cloud availability at the user’s desired scale as well as uptime and responsiveness metrics.

Choosing Between On-premises and Hosted Cloud

Some companies prefer to host on-premises because they feel more secure knowing their cloud is running on their own site. However, when things go wrong, some companies find they don’t have the expertise on-hand to quickly recover. Furthermore, on-site hosting is at least three times as expensive as it is to outsource to a hosting specialist.

With the hosted option for BootStack, your OpenStack cloud will be hosted on Ubuntu-certified hardware in SoftLayer data centers. SoftLayer provides customizable bare metal and virtual servers run on the highest performing cloud infrastructure available. Users can seamlessly move data between servers at no cost and benefit from secure, fast, and low-latency communications between data centers. 24x7 expert staff in each data center can troubleshoot any rare issues that can’t be directly resolved through their self-service management portal. Canonical and SoftLayer also take care of patches and upgrades to both the operating system and OpenStack, hardware and software failure prevention and fix, proactive health monitoring of the cloud and hardware, and resolution of any other problems.

No Lock-In and Predictable Cost

The two features that set BootStack apart from other managed cloud products are the predictable cost structure and the lack of lock-in. With BootStack, users can access every tool and every machine, any time. A company can choose to take over the management of its cloud at any time, at which point it will receive training and support from Canonical to ensure a smooth transition. BootStack customers can then choose to either bring their cloud in-house or continue hosting with SoftLayer.

In terms of costs, BootStack cloud is priced at $15 per day per server, plus the cost of the hosting. SoftLayer offers a number of bare metal servers that exceed the OpenStack recommended configuration, starting at $699 per month. You pay as you go, and can scale as your business needs change.

All-in-all, it’s a flexible managed cloud at a predictable cost with expert staff to manage it until you’re ready to take over!

Whether you already process credit card information or are just starting to consider it, you’ve likely made yourself familiar with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). The PCI-DSS’s 12 requirements (plus one appendix for service providers) outlines what you need to do to have a compliant workload and to pass your audits.

While SoftLayer handles the physical access and security aspects on our platform, we also offer tools to supplement your internal tools and processes to help you maintain PCI-DSS compliance such as the Citrix NetScaler VPX and MPX Platinum Edition product line.

Unique Features NetScaler Offers That Support PCI-DSS

Mask Payment Account Numbers (PANs)

With NetScaler Platinum Edition it’s possible to configure the device to block or mask PANs to prevent leakage of cardholder data—even if your application is attempting to present the data to a user. This is extremely useful when adhering to PCI-DSS Section 3.3—the first six and last four digits are the maximum number of digits to be displayed.

NetScaler provides reporting as well so that your developers can tighten up that aspect of your application for more identification protection.

Detect and Prevent Web-based Attacks

By deploying a Web application firewall into your application stack, you can fully comply with PCI-DSS Section 6.6, which requires addressing new threats and vulnerabilities on an ongoing basis and ensuring these applications are protected against known attacks. The NetScaler Application Firewall module included in Platinum Edition provides continuous protection and can dynamically adjust to changes in your application code.

The NetScaler Web Application Firewall helps close the door on many common coding vulnerabilities outlined in PCI-DSS Section 6.5. By utilizing XML security protections, form tagging, dynamic context sensitive protections, and deep stream inspection, you can block, log, and report on these common security vectors and ensure your development team can shore up you applications

How to Order
SoftLayer offers Citrix NetScaler VPX Standard and Platinum Editions in multiple bandwidth packages—10Mbps, 200Mbps, and 1Gbps. Order these quickly and easily from your customer portal devices page (click order devices, scroll to networking devices, and select Citrix NetScaler).

SoftLayer also provides the NetScaler MPX for customers that require a dedicated hardware appliance running the NetScaler OS that can handle thousands of concurrent SSL transactions. To order the MPX product, chat with one of our sales advisors.

Be sure to take a look at some of the other features included with Citrix NetScaler.

Learn More About PCI-DSS
SoftLayer supports PCI workloads by providing the physical security required in the DSS. Within the customer portal you’re able to pull our most recent SOC 2 Type II audit report. You can use this as part of your compliance strategy. The rest is up to you to take advantage of the tools and services to make sure you meet the remaining PCI standards. Additionally, when you’re working with your PCI-DSS qualified security assessor, we can also provide an Attestation of Compliance.

If you’ve been following along at home (and we hope you have been), you’re probably well-versed in SoftLayer and Cloudant’s free Big Data Academy, the (free) webinar and workshop series designed to teach you all about deploying big data workloads in the cloud, optimizing your infrastructure environment, and capitalizing on the value of your data. (Did we mention it’s free?)

Did you enjoy these Big Data Academy webinars? Well, get offline and follow them to Europe! The Big Data Academy is trekking across the continent this summer, with free in-person workshops in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris, and Helsinki throughout June and July. Register now and max out that summer vacation with a European workshop. (Bonus: All workshop participants will receive a special offer up to $1,250 per month for six months on SoftLayer.)

There’s something unique about getting an opinion about a product or service from someone who has actually used that service—it’s part of the reason why the reviews on Amazon and apps like Yelp have become so popular.

We can tell you all day long about all the things the SoftLayer cloud platform is capable of, but wouldn’t it be nice to get real life accounts about real customers who are building real businesses by using it?

The new customer stories page on our website features video and written stories of just that—happy customers who wanted to share their experiences about changing their industries or improving the way they do business by using SoftLayer.

And some of our customers are doing some really, really cool things. Take Sohonet, for example. The company is using the SoftLayer cloud to improve processes in the movie industry. Its private network for processing, storing, and collaborating on media workloads in the cloud has set a new standard for production and post-production work in the media industry. Check it out:

We have many more SoftLayer customers who are also doing cool things. You can read their stories on our new customer stories page.

We think we have some of the most innovative customers in the cloud. If you’re thinking about becoming one of them, take a look around. Then sign up, and maybe you can be our next featured story.